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House News
March 24, 2003 16:54
Extremely offensive googlesnacksNow that googlesnacks are now subject to the politically correct critique, I will be posting this googlesnack set with the appropriate set of disclaimers, to avoid any possibility of someone accidently getting offended, because we wouldn't want that to happen. So, for those of you who get offended by getting out of bed in the morning, STOP READING NOW!
"port 6508" Notice, this is not intended to be offensive to the 6502 Hopefully, nobody will get TOO offended by this googlesnack edition. If I manage to survive the backlash from the PC crowd, I might try some googlesnacks again in a few days. Enjoy :)
March 23, 2003 16:58
Making things go away by not talking about itIt has come to my attention that displaying to the world certain derogatory things that people were searching for when they find my site somehow means that I am making light of those subjects. Read the last news entry with a googlesnack entry and read the comments if you need some perspective on this. Since obviously the mere mention of certain subjects is bad, I'm going to ponder a world where we don't talk about such things. Ever. Lets see how it would work. Child abuse is a bad thing. Therefore, we shouldn't talk about it. If someone is abused, that person should be ignored when they talk about it, in fact, they should be encouraged to say NOTHING about it. Because talking about it is bad. The person that abused the child should be left alone. Because, in order to prosecute this person, we would need to hold a trial, which means you'll have prosecutors, defenders, judges, juries, witnesses, experts and the news media all TALKING ABOUT IT. The good, the bad, and the ugly. This is a bad thing, so prosecuting child abusers should be forbidden. Of course, this would leave them free to continue the activity, but as long as nobody ever talks about it, we'll never know about it, and that's as good as it not happening. Now, I'm informing to the world that certain people are searching for pedophiles. This person might be looking for pictures of children, or they might be looking for a list of sex offenders to make sure they're not living next to one of them. No matter what they were looking for, it wasn't my site. And that's the point of the googlesnack. It points out hits on my site that were completely accidental. If I simply refuse to mention that someone was searching for "15 year old girls in thongs" that won't change the fact that someone actually searched for it. And it isn't very likely to give someone the idea. If they wanted to search for that type of subject matter, they already would be doing it, and nothing I say would make any difference. To anyone who suffered abuse or any other trauma, I'm truely sorry. I'm sorry you had to go through that. I'm sorry that life didn't turn out perfectly for you. But you're not alone in this world. Very few people have had a rosy life. Everyone has problems, some more severe than yours and some less. But the important thing here is that you are STILL ALIVE. This means you have a lot going for you, and you should learn to cope with whatever ailments you suffered years and years ago. Spending your entire life seeking out things to get offended by means that you will have a miserable life, and it doesn't have to be that way, but at this point, there's nobody to blame but yourself. The world is an offensive place. There's war, murders, pornography, hate speech, pollution, medical malpractice, Southpark, a long list of four letter words, radio spectrum interference in violation of FCC regulations, and yes, even child abuse. You have two options, either raise your head high and venture out into the world and learn to deal with the chaos that governs the universe, or curl up into the fetal position until you die, saving yourself from the opportunity to get offended. And the next time you read something you don't like, spend the time to absorb the full context so you can react in a civilized, orderly manner. People are much more likely to take you seriously if you sound like someone who's mentally sane. If you go off half cocked, calling people sick/perverted/whatever just because they said something that offended you without offering any reasonable argument or evidence, they're likely to dismiss you as an escaped mental patient who's desparately crawling your way back to the hospital. And that wouldn't be much of a stretch.
March 22, 2003 15:00
Sprinkler Works AgainOf course, now winter will probably go on for a few more months, but I figure I might as well get it going so people will quit asking about it. Same rules as before. Only operational during daylight hours, for a maximum of 30 minutes a day. I'm going to try to get the rest of the old features back on the page today, such as the insanity level, doorbell & motion sensor logs, and a few other things as well.
March 21, 2003 15:41
More car adjustmentsIt would appear that I'm going to need to do some more adjustments to the furniture in the living room (and probably elsewhere eventually) to prevent the car from getting stuck. People seem to be notoriously eagar to get the car disabled. They either run it off the edge of the living room step, or they wedge it under some piece of furniture, or they wedge it between two peices of furniture. Its not a big deal if I'm home and can easily fix it, but I have no option when I'm at work.
March 21, 2003 15:31
More forumsWhile it's still early, and might not turn into the massive display of denial that superhonda's forum did, a poster to another forum, Prexus, has publicially announced to the world that my site is fake. We'll see how it progresses. Registration not required to view.
March 20, 2003 16:42
GooglesnacksSome googlesnacks to keep you occupied in the event that there's nothing happening in the world. Oh, and I hear there's some small fight going on in the Mid East. Might want to look into it. :)
naked 16 year olds
March 17, 2003 15:12
Putting Marriage Technicalities to RestElizabeth Smart is considered by Mitchell to be his wife. While obviously no court of law or organized religion, let alone her family will recognize this, a radio host brought up an interesting potential technicality with regards to possible sexual abuse. The age of consent in Ohio is 16, although as long as the victim is at least 13, if the offender does not know the age of the victim, this is also a potential loophole, but not one that is likely to help. However, if the victim is married, statuatory rape wouldn't apply, and in some cases, sexual assault wouldn't apply either, as marriage tends to imply consent. So if through some greasy wheel of the legal system Mitchel and his lawyer are somehow able to convince the jury that the marriage was legitimate, any sexual assault and even the entire kidnapping issue could be thrown out or lessened. However, this is not likely Refer to the marriage laws of Ohio. Ignoring the religious aspect, I will focus on the legal aspect. Here is a list of some of the requirements for a legal marriage that were not fulfilled: A valid picture ID must be presented. A marriage license is required, and both the bride and groom must be present to apply. A $45 fee is required in some counties. For anyone under the age of 18, parental consent is required. For anyone under the age of 16, approval from the juvenile court is also required, and they may require additional counseling. Both parties must also assure the court that the marriage is voluntary and in the best interest of the minor, mostly to prevent parents from forcing one of their children to marry due to an indescretion of some type, but it applies here too. For common law marriages, those without a ceremony which are legally declared husband and wife, both parties must be competant and able to give consent, must be able to get married, and held themselves out such that others perceived them to be married. If the standard line was that she was their daughter, this last reason could not apply.
To perform the ceremony, one of the following is required to officiate:
Two witnesses over the age of 18 are required.
It's a safe bet that there are no grounds, legal or otherwise, to consider Elizabeth Smart his wife, no matter what happened. So if he continues to ramble on that point of contention, treat it for what it is. Rambling. Rambling of a sick degenerate who is now safely located where he can no longer hurt himself or others any longer.
March 16, 2003 11:14
Super Honda and other thingsHad an interesting little thread going over the last few days. A thread starts out as most threads do, but almost everyone claim's the site isn't real. So I start on the journey to prove them wrong. Interesting exchange. You can check it out here but you'll have to register first to read it. Still doesn't beat the Tomz Incident. I've added capture icons to the cams that didn't have them and fixed the feature on a couple of the cams it wasn't working on. The car is still working. Nobody's broken it yet. Amazing though it might seem. :)
March 15, 2003 22:14
RC Car is fixedI finally managed to get to Tanner and buy some sockets. 60 cents of parts were all I needed to fix the silly thing. And it works. Now, if another transistor blows out, it will only take me about 5 minutes to fix it, instead of the hour+ it would have normally taken, not to mention, it won't cause any more damage to the circuit board. I'm planning to wire up the other car the same way, so all I'll have to do in the event of a break is to swap the top of the car and it'll be ready to go again. So go play with it! Before someone breaks it again. :) I'm ready to start taking pictures for the visitors page again. So go ahead and email them to pmathis@dfw.net. JPEG ONLY. No bmp's, no png's, no tga's. As close to 320x240 as possible. If not possible, the width=320 is preferable. Otherwise, the pic will be scaled to fit anyway, but in the interests of quality, 320x240 is best. Email them to pmathis@dfw.net. If for any reason you don't see it on the visitors page in a week, just send it again. It IS possible that I simply forget about your email. It's not something you should take personally. Also, not that this should require an explaination, but make sure the pic is actually of YOU. Not of some japanese singer, and not of some chick involved in soft core porn. Sad as it might seem, I'll probably recognize it.
March 14, 2003 00:29
Elizabeth SmartLike most Americans, I recognized the the girl's name when they mentioned on the radio that she was found. I remember vaguely what she looked like, even though it had probably been months since I saw a picture or heard anything about it. Yet as time went on, despite daily press conferences, I had no further exposure to the case until Tuesday afternoon. The whole world, not to mention the family, has rejoiced, and I'm sure everyone is chafing at the bit to find out what happened. Why was she kidnapped, where was she held, what happened to her? And then the more pressing questions come in. Why didn't she try to escape? Why didn't she scream? Why did her parents invite the kidnapper to their home. Why did the police stall on releasing the composite sketch of the person who turned out to be the kidnapper. And now I read all over the place, endless speculation of asinine proportions. Things just "don't add up". She must have run away, or wanted to be kidnapped, or her parents conspired in some way to make this happen. People have called them creepy because they made the horrible faux pas of trying to give some aid to those who are more in need. Sure, they made some stupid mistakes. But if any good has come of this, they've realizes the error of their ways. The bubble they live in has burst, and despite how they choose to help people in the future, they will take their actions more responsibly. And if others in the same position learn from the Smart's mistakes, they can prevent future problems of a similar nature. Over the next few weeks, we're going to all get a crash course on various psychological conditions while under duress. I've never suffered through anything that she went through. However, I've been in a situation where I was brainwashed. If you listen to somebody tell you something often enough, and don't expose yourself to alternate views, and don't question obvious flaws in judgement, you start to believe these things yourself. My will to do ANYTHING about it was completely sapped. And I was an adult at the time. And I didn't go through anything even remotely as bad as this poor girl has. That girl was frightened out of her mind. She didn't want to be with her captors, but she didn't know how to run away. She didn't know how to escape, and even when questioned by the police, where all she had to say is "I am Elizabeth Smart" to end the nightmare, she couldn't do it. Those monsters had convinced her that the world she used to know was gone forever. She had nowhere else to go. And until she was back in the arms of her father did she realize that she no longer had anything to fear. Look at those pictures. The picture of her walking out to the car. The picture of her with her father and sister. That girl is HAPPY. That is NOT someone who just spent the last 9 months enjoying herself. She is not suffering from being yanked away from her "new family". That girl is back where she wants to be. If she had the capability to escape, be it mentally or physically, she would have. She is the victim here. You can point fingers at everyone else if you want, but she is blameless in all of this, and these sick insinuations that this psychological nightmare is something she wanted will not assist in her recovery. Certainly there will be emotional trauma. There will be lots of counseling. She's behind on school. But she will recover, and judging by what I've seen so far, she'll recover pretty quickly. LET HER. The media needs to back off. She's home, we're all happy. In the weeks to come, we will learn a lot about this, probably more than we want to know. If and when she wants to come forward and discuss anything with the public, that will be up to her. In time details will come out. There will be charges filed, there will be trials. This will all go public, and we'll all learn everything we want to know. Until then, just be happy she's home and try not to invent conspiracies that have no merit.
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